


Pit Stop

by MrMammon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Horror, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-01-20 21:56:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMammon/pseuds/MrMammon
Summary: A newly retired businessman makes a pit stop at a gas station in the middle-of-nowhere region of southwest Missouri...and soon wishes he hadn't.
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

With the sound of crinkling leather, Dylan dismounted his Tiger Explorer and shoved one hand into his pocket to fish out his wallet. It had been a long day of riding, and after filling up the tank at this Podunk gas station he had plans to find the nearest motel and crash for the night. It was only about six currently, the sun still a couple hours away from setting, but Dylan was old. Old enough to have retired, bought a new bike, and taken off cross-country while leaving his grown-ass kids at home to worry about his well being. He wouldn’t even have a cellphone if it weren’t for them. Well…he might. Having a virtual library the size of a TV remote in his pocket, filled to the brim with L’Amour and McMurtry (and others, of course, but those were his Big Two) was a huge plus. 

The gas pump accepted Dylan’s Visa with a soft ‘blip’ and the nozzle was freed from its lock. He yanked his card back with his left hand, and in one smooth motion, swept the nozzle up into his right. As he pulled the handle and felt the hose jump as it began to feed the Explorer, Dylan took a slow look at his surroundings. 

The last city Dylan could remember passing through was Springfield, though his memory was foggy on exactly when that was. Instinctually his lips curled back into a frown. Memory loss came with age, but it was still hard for Dylan to accept. He’d spent forty years building up a moderately successful chain of auto repair shops around the Chicago area, handling most of the finances himself with very little trouble. The numbers on the pump continued to rocket upwards as Dylan racked his brain, trying to remember how he got where he was. 

A small sign across the road read “Welcome to Harterville!” At least that’s what Dylan thought it said. The aged white sign was overrun with unkempt vines of some kind of plant, and the lettering was faded near to the point of illegibility. 

That’s when Dylan realized the only sound he could hear was his heart beating, and immediately he became intensely alert. Like a man coming out of a daze, he looked all around, turning in a full circle. There wasn’t any wind, or even the sounds of birds chirping. He counted three empty cars in the gas station’s parking lot, and about a dozen more parked in the driveways of houses up and down the adjacent street. But no movement. Not even inside of the station.

K-CHUNK went the pump as it turned itself off. Dylan nearly leapt out of his skin, leaning heavily on his bike to keep from falling over. 

Two gulping breaths. An adjustment of the sleeves on his jacket. Dylan cursed at himself under his breath as he took the nozzle up and put it back into the pump. It still worked, so obviously there was nothing to worry about. 

Lost in your own head again. Dylan thought as he waited for the receipt to print.

zzt zzt zzt

Thin, white paper slowly emerged from the small slot on the pump which Dylan promptly tore away. It was out of habit that he looked at it before jumping back on his bike. 

What he saw made his eyes go wide. Printed in black ink on the receipt were the words “GET OUT.”

Something inside of the station fell with a loud crash, again making Dylan jump. The receipt fell from his hand as a yelp escaped his mouth. 

Dylan’s first instinct was to jump on his bike and get the hell out of there, but he also thought there might be someone who needed help. He unzipped the small bag next to the seat of his bike and reached into pull out his silver Ruger SR1911. In one smooth motion he brought the gun up and saw it was loaded, the brass of the bullet visible in the barrel through the small round indicator. He checked to make sure the safety was on and slipped it into the back of his jeans, over his jacket for easy access. 

Cautiously, Dylan made his way around the gas pump and towards the building, nervously scratching at the well-trimmed grey beard on his face. He could see the sign on the door was set to “Open” as he approached the double black glass doors. It was dark inside. 

Before he pushed the door open, Dylan cast a glance to his left to look inside one of the cars parked nearby. Empty in the front, and some dark mass that looked like crumpled clothing in the backseat. 

He turned back to the interior of the store and slowly pushed inside. No ringing bell announced his entrance, and the stench of rotting meat assaulted his senses as the door closed shut behind him. 

Dylan covered his mouth and nose with his left hand to keep from choking from the smell. “H-Hello?” He called out to the empty aisles of snacks. No answer. He was about to call out again when he heard a soft click-click-click. His right hand gripped the pistol. 

click-click-click. Then a low, prolonged groan—like a mixture of pain and pleasure. Followed by a wet crunch. 

It came from behind the counter. Dylan slowly turned in that direction, his heart racing in his chest. The Something rattled behind the counter, just out of sight. Dylan took a single step, slowly drawing his pistol out and around to his front, holding it down around his waist. He felt the safety come undone as he flipped it with an index finger. 

From behind the counter slowly rose a pair of glowing golden eyes, barely peeking over the edge. They glared at Dylan with unmistakable animalistic hunger. The eyes climbed higher as the creature revealed itself. 

A snake… the thought fluttered across Dylan’s mind as his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. 

A human skull bearing fangs instead of teeth sat upon a spine-like column with a long, twisting black tongue dangling down from the missing jaw. It swayed back and forth, holding in its tongue the severed head of a man whose own face was frozen in shock and horror, blood dripping from his mouth and the jagged, dangling meat of his neck. What looked like elongated ribs jutted from the creature’s spine like fingers, twitching and dripping an opaque liquid. In its vast, open chest cavity were three other severed heads in varying states of decay, sunken into the bleeding, pulsating meat. 

“Oh…fuck…” Dylan froze in horror, unable to stop himself from shivering all over like a frightened puppy. 

The snake-thing rose to the ceiling, golden eyes glaring at Dylan. It reared back and from somewhere it let loose a bone-grinding roar, splattering Dylan with blood and gore. He screamed in return, louder than he ever had in his life, bringing up his pistol and firing three shots into the beast without thinking. It hissed and jolted back into the rack of cigarettes, glass shattering and raining down hundreds of unopened packs and cartons upon itself. Its tongue let go of the severed head, throwing it upwards where it thunked against the ceiling and came bouncing off the counter and rolled down near Dylan’s feet. In the back of the dark store, a good fifteen feet away, Dylan saw a black, scaly tail thrashing violently, shattering doors of freezers. 

Driven by a terror he had never felt before, Dylan bolted from the store as fast as his booted feet could carry him. Pain beat in his chest in time with his heart as he gasped for air, nearly causing him to trip over his own feet. But he managed to reach his bike without falling. Thrusting the pistol back into his belt, Dylan leapt into the leather seat and pushed the ignition button. 

Nothing happened. Dylan looked down at the console in disbelief, panting hard and heavily. Something from inside the station thrashed and crashed, twisted metal. He pushed the button again, feeling only an empty click.

The creature’s roar filled the air as it came bursting out of the storefront. Dylan screamed along with it as one final push finally brought the bike to life. Without thinking, Dylan put pedal to the metal and blindly tore ass out of the parking lot of the gas station. 

Deeper into Harterville.


	2. Chapter 2

Dylan screamed along with the engine of his bike as he fled the gas station. He paid little attention to his direction, all he wanted to do was get away from that thing. After the first turn, three hundred yards from the station, he nearly crashed---the empty streets were suddenly littered with debris: broken down cars, scatterings of glass and twisted metal. A dull red fire hydrant torn out of its foundation, but no water spouting into the air. 

The old man, still panting and with a sore throat, slowly brought his bike to a stop. Scanning the path ahead, he also noticed blood and body parts mixed in with the other debris. Arms, torsos, legs. Heads. Heads that looked like they’d been skinned, skulls opened, and brains scooped out. Dylan fought the urge to vomit, not that there was much in his stomach in the first place. Somewhere in the distance, carried by the soft wind, he smelled fire. 

Carefully, Dylan steered his bike through the chaos, the low purr of the engine the only sound in the air. It made him uncomfortable, he felt like an easy target....so he kept his head down low. 

The further he traveled into town, the worse things started to look. Whole houses were torn apart or burned down to their skeletons. And there were some actual skeletons as well, up in trees, sticking out of sewer drains, tangled up in bushes. He even saw a chewed up corpse on a roof, its white tiles stained with blood. The person had been trying to escape something, the bloody trail leading into an attic window several feet away. Their legs were missing, shredded jeans telling a tale of terror. 

No signs of life. That is until a horrific screech pierced the air and out from a pile of brush darted a small black figure. 

It was a cat, fur matted with blood and tiny green tentacles sprouting from all over. Its golden eyes were nearly popping out of its skull in terror as it wailed and flailed its way into the open. The poor animal stumbled over its front paws as it fell off the curb, thrashing against the alien things that lashed at it with bloody spikes. Now Dylan had come to a complete stop, the thought of putting the cat out of its misery flittered across his mind but before he could do anything it fell right in the middle of the road and exploded in a mist of fur and guts, leaving behind a writhing mass of tentacles the size of a football. 

Dylan inched his bike forward and around the writhing mass until he was in front of it. He switched the bike in to reverse and slowly backed up until the back tire was nearly touching the tentacles. Then he flipped into neutral and turned on the gas. With a loud squeal and a thick pillar of smoke, the motorcycle shredded the mass of tentacles like tissue paper, sending bits of it scattering up into the air and away with the wind. It left a surprising lack of mess behind. 

Dylan felt a chill go up and down his spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He slapped them down, looking around. His eyes passed over an open drain to his left, in the curb, and for a brief moment a pair of glimmering golden eyes stared out at him. Dylan did a double take and they disappeared. Was it the thing from the gas station? Or something else? He shuddered to think just what might be lurking around him, unseen. He scratched at his beard nervously and shifted back into first gear, doing his best to ignore the feeling of dozens of eyes staring daggers into his back. 

The sun was starting to set before Dylan began to relax in the slightest. The roads were clearing and the devastation was letting up. Fewer ruined homes and vehicles. Fewer corpses, or at least pieces of them. There was no way it was safe to be out in the dark around here, so Dylan began to take stock of the homes he passed. None looked appealing. No porch lights came on as the darkness approached. Only stillness. 

The road ahead dipped down and Dylan could see that he was coming up on whatever Harterville probably once considered the ‘business district.’ A cluster of tall brick buildings with a Walmart and McDonald’s off to the right side, as if added as an afterthought. To the left was a broken down motel, right next to the police station. Further down the path, a good mile and a half away, there rose several thick columns of black smoke, barely visible in the dying light. Dylan wondered what was burning. 

The road cleared as Dylan drew closer to the police station. There was a vague doubt tickling the back of his brain, one that told him he would not find any help there. 

“Probably not.” Dylan said aloud, as he rolled into the parking lot. 

There were no cars, but dozens of dark tire marks told him there had been and that they had all left in a hurry. Dylan stopped himself as he started to reach for his pistol, wondering if it was a good idea to walk in armed. He lifted his leather jacket up and over the pistol, which he moved to the front of his belt. Behind him, street lights began to flicker to life, casting pale white light all over the worn down, and twisted roads of Harterville. 

The glass doors opened with a barely audible whoosh as Dylan pushed his way inside. It was pleasantly cool in the station, but as he had predicted it was also empty. 

No one sat behind the desk in the lobby. A small plant of some kind sitting in one corner, looking half-dead and drooping. There was a slick, black phone sitting next to an unpowered computer monitor, and a messy pile of papers piled in the center, over the keyboard. 

Moving as quietly as he could, Dylan moved behind the desk to check the papers, thinking maybe he could find something useful there. Information of some kind. When he pushed the rolling chair out of his way he looked down and saw a woman in a uniform sitting beneath the desk, her face caked in blood, eyes big as dinner plates...and black as night. 

He yelped in terror, and she responded in kind. But with a single blink she was gone. Dylan leaned against the wall, staring at the now empty space beneath the desk, gasping for air and clutching a fistful of his jacket with one hand.

“Jesus...Christ...,” he managed to gasp, hunching over, hands on his knees. 

The papers had fallen from the desk and scattered across the floor. Ruffling through them provided a frustrating lack of useful information, but there was a pattern in the dozen or so most recently filled out reports. Domestic disturbances involving teenagers becoming combative with parents, extremely violent fights at the high school (one involving knives and several trips to the hospital for stitches and other, more serious injuries), and several runaway and missing children alerts. 

Dylan slowly stood up from the floor, having spent a half hour going through all the reports. He winced as his knees and back cried out with sharp pains, leaning on the desk for support. 

That was stupid, Henderson. Dylan cursed at himself as he fought to push the pain away. He looked up and saw it was now officially nighttime. 

Feeling somehow exposed and vulnerable, Dylan left the lobby of the police station, going through a black door to his right that lead into a large office area where it looked like the local police force made their home. The lights came on with a soft lick and low hum. Dozens of desks sat empty all around, some with cups of long-cold coffee sitting on them still untouched. Thankfully, all the blinds for all of the windows were down. 

In the back of the room was a partitioned area with a door labeled “Chief’s Office.” Dylan made his way there, weaving his way through the desks. He reached out for the door handle but found himself pausing just as his fingers brushed the cold steel. Again, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Dylan slapped the back of his neck hard, and as if in answer there came a hard thump from somewhere outside. This was followed by a low, deep groan that lasted a good fifteen seconds before trailing off into a wet grinding noise before finally growing quiet. 

The door came open with nary a sound, much to Dylan’s relief, and he slipped into the windowless room while flipping the light on at the same time. For whatever reason, the door was lockable...which also made him feel better. An old oak desk sat in the center of the office, flanked to the left by a pair of heavy duty filing cabinets and to the right by a large bookshelf that reached the ceiling. But even better there was a leather couch against the wall next to the bookshelf. Dylan settled in, finding the couch a bit short, but better than nothing. He pushed his pistol beneath one of the weird stationary pillows he was using and stared up at the ceiling as he waited for sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Dylan’s eyes snapped open suddenly, he didn’t even remember falling asleep. Slowly, he sat up and looked around, confused at the unfamiliar surroundings. It took him a minute to remember where he was and what was going on. He swung his legs over the edge of the couch and moved to his feet and found himself immediately overcome by a sense of dizziness that nearly caused him to fall over. The chief’s desk made for solid support, but when his hand slid on something wet he snapped his hand back like he’d been bitten.

On the desk, written in what looked like blood, were the words, “GET OUT.” The same as on the receipt at the gas station.

Wiping his hand on one of the decorative throw pillows, Dylan pushed the phrase out of his mind, letting his eyes drift over the clutter that crowded the desktop. A particular document atop a pile of multicolored folders caught his attention with its scribblings in both black and stark red ink. Making sure his hand was clean, he picked it up and began reading.

It was another report, this one filed by an officer named Garret Harmond date three weeks ago. In it, Officer Harmond detailed an occurrence at the local high school involving a case of bullying growing abnormally violent.

“Incident began during the twelve-ten lunch period, involving a total of four students and two instructors. By the time I arrived everything was under control and three of the four students were on the ground, covered in blood, and one of the instructors was nursing a stab wound on the lower left abdomen. Felicia Barr (hereby referred to as Student A), a special needs student, was physically assaulted by two students --- Jonathan Manna (Student B) and Ross Cryer (Student C) --- and Billy Jackson (Student D) came to her defense. [Written in red ink, in a different hand, “Why was the assault allowed to go on without intervention for so long?”]

The beginning of, and exact reasoning behind, the incident as a whole, according to witnesses at the scene, is unknown. ‘A’ was screaming as ‘B’ and ‘C’ pulled at her hair and punched her in the stomach, back, and around her face and neck. When no one else would come to help ‘A’, ‘D’ stepped in, initiating a physical altercation with ‘B’ and ‘C’ which lasted for thirty seconds before the two instructors --- Dr. Abram Horovitz and Jeanette Loving --- were finally able to step in. After a minute or so, witnesses describe a sudden power outage in the school that lasted fifteen to thirty seconds. When the lights came back, students B, C, and D were lying on the floor with blood coming from their eyes, noses, and mouths, and Dr. Horovitz was slumped against the wall with a seven inch, vertical wound in his abdomen, with ‘A’ nowhere to be found (she would later be found back in the Special Needs classroom around the corner and approximately 15 yards away from the lunchroom. Aside from bruising, there were no signs of further violence visible on her.

‘B’ and ‘C’ were pronounced dead at the scene, the initial coroner’s report at the scene citing blunt force trauma as the cause. [Red ink: The first deaths in the series of unnaturally violent incidents.] ‘D’ was in critical condition with similar hard blows to the chest and abdomen. Horovitz’s wounds were serious, but not life threatening, and he was transported to the hospital for treatment. [In red ink: “Horovitz wound different. Why?”]

Some students report hearing whispering when the lights went out and strange clicking sounds [Red ink: similar with the attempted kidnappings at the elementary school last month]. Painted on the walls of the S.N. Room in what looked like blood [Red ink: Sent samples taken to DNA lab in Springfield] were strange symbols of varying size, no trace of the substance found on ‘A’s hands or on her person. [Red ink: More evidence of some sort of occult activity?]”

Dylan lowered the paper and tore his eyes away from it. His vision was blurring, so he shook his head and blinked several times to try and clear it. Twenty-four hours ago he would have scoffed at ‘occult activity’ but now…his whole worldview was different. Monsters, or perhaps demons, were real. That meant Hell was real, which meant Heaven and God must be as well. Dylan had never been a religious man, going to church with his parents (and later, his wife) mainly out of a sense of obligation than anything else. Suddenly he felt like vomiting, even with his glaringly empty stomach.

The rest of the report was written mainly in witness statements with attached crime scene photos. Including the uncovered corpses of the two students. It was obvious even to Dylan that something was right about the boys. One looked as if his chest had been completely caved in and the other’s neck was bent at a hard right angle. A close up of Dr. Horovitz’s wound nearly caused Dylan to drop the bundle. It was jagged and rough, small at the bottom and growing wider the further up it went. The flesh around the wound was black, and the blood was mixed with an opaque substance that looked awfully familiar.

The next page held photos of all of the named people in the report, school photos taken earlier in the year. They all looked…normal. Dylan had no idea why he thought that. He stopped and lingered on Felicia Barr’s photo. The girl looked to be about fifteen years old, she had wide, brown eyes and a bright smile. Her dark hair was long, waist-length perhaps, and stuck up in some places, as if it had resisted being combed down.

Just then, Dylan’s attention was taken from the photos by a soft scraping sound. He looked up and written in red, on the wall and across the door, in rough letters, “**LEAVE ME ALONE.**”

The paper in Dylan’s hands jerked once and his gaze went down. The photo of Felicia had changed. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but sneering, showing strangely jagged teeth beneath barely parted lips.

_Blink_

Her eyes were black holes. Her mouth grown wide to reveal more teeth. More teeth than should be possible in any human mouth. She twitched.

Dylan dropped the papers and they fluttered to the floor, face down. Dylan’s chest felt heavy as he gasped for air, which he just couldn’t seem to get quite enough of. There was a soft click and the office door opened ever so slightly.

Hand on his gun, Dylan shakily grasped the handle and pulled the door further open. Nothing but the empty office greeted him. Bright sunlight shown through cracks in the closed blinds, clusters of drifting dust motes visible within them. Quiet. Peaceful. Without realizing he’d been holding it, Dylan let out a long, relieved breath.

He made his way out of the station, briefly considering making a stop in the weapon storage. Harterville wasn’t a big town, but the cops probably had at least a few shotguns or rifles of some kind. He decided not to check.

Outside he was greeted by a chilly morning wind. He slowly shuffled down the entrance stairs, stopping at the bottom as he saw his motorcycle. It was turned around, as if it had been backed in. Confusion enveloped Dylan for a brief moment, he was sure he hadn’t backed in like that. It was then he noticed the words written in big, blocky letters on the pavement of the parking lot.

Oozing black letters screamed, “**HELP US!**”

The hair on the back his neck was standing up. It felt as if he was being watched by dozens of eyes. Dylan spun around looking at his surroundings, looking into all the empty windows of the buildings around him. Nothing. Silence.

The roar of the engine filled the air as Dylan settled into the seat and flicked the switch. At least it didn’t sputter this time. Ignoring his tingling paranoia, Dylan drifted back onto the street and headed west out of the police station with his mind settled on trying to find the high school.


	4. Chapter 4

Dylan felt like a thousand eyes were staring daggers at him as he maneuvered his way through neighborhood after neighborhood, passing empty houses and unidentifiable piles of meat. Streaks and stains of blood told tale of unbelievable violence and terror. Yet the engine of his motorcycle was the only sound in his ears, and he was the only moving thing. Or so he thought.

Dylan had no idea how long he’d been riding around looking for the school when the little boy on the bright red bicycle appeared at the side of the road. The boy was dressed in a black jacket and faded blue jeans. He stared with wide eyes as the older man slowed and stopped, his head following along.

Apprehension gripped Dylan, and he felt a small pang of guilt along with it as his hand instinctively went to the hidden gun within its holster at his hip. He stopped just short of grabbing it. “What the hell are you doing out here, kid?” Dylan asked raspily. He cleared his throat. This kid was only the second living thing he has seen in Harterville since his arrival.

“I dunno,” the kid said, adjusting his position in the bicycle seat, which squealed loudly under his weight. “Just ridin’ my bike, I guess.” The casual way he spoke, like there weren’t body parts lying in the grass just a dozen or so feet behind him.

Dylan felt a lump forming in his throat, “W-What happened---,” he began.

“Doesn’t matter,” the boy spoke before Dylan could get his question out. That’s when Dylan noticed there was a small bump in the boy’s left cheek. “What are _you_ doing here? You ain’t from here.” The boy’s lips puckered and he made a loud suckling sound as the lump shifted from the left to the right.

Sweat streaked down Dylan’s face and into his eyes but he didn’t move to clear it away. “I was just---,”

The boy’s left arm shot up suddenly and a thin index finger extended, pointing further down the street. “Take the next right, then go down two blocks and turn left. Couple-a miles after that and you should hit the school.” His arm dropped and he stared at the older man with eyes that were slowly becoming bloodshot.

“Thanks, kid,” Dylan said, quickly turning his attention away from the boy.

The boy grinned, mouth growing far larger than it should have, cracked lips peeled back revealing twin rows of dagger sharp teeth. Held lightly between the fangs was a single, bleeding eyeball. When Dylan’s eyes gave one last, quick glance the boy chomped down on the eye, sending a thick, gooey substance squirting out over his chin. The boy laughed, black ooze dripping from his now-empty eye sockets, as Dylan peeled out.

Roaring laughter echoed in Dylan’s ears as he took the first right turn in a tight arc, he didn’t dare look back. But he didn’t have to. Halfway down the street, parked at the curb was a little red bicycle with a grinning creature in a black jacket and blue jeans. On the front of the bike was a wire basket, and in that basket was the bloodied head of an adult, the flesh around the neck hanging in ragged shreds through the gaps in the basket. Dylan sped up. The creature began to laugh even harder, twisted grey flesh bulging from the ever shrinking clothes.

“YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE!” the creature howled as Dylan sped by it, he felt flecks of its spittle land on his face.

When the time came to turn left, Dylan slowed down to take it easy. The first thing that greeted him after the turn was, again, the monstrous creature on the bright red bike. Though it really wasn’t sitting on it anymore so much as the bike had become a part of its body, grey-black folds of wriggling flesh poured over it. It was still laughing, and now wearing a necklace of severed heads that bounced on its multiple chins. Each head was connected to another via a thick strip of barbed wire that went in the mouth and came out the back of the head. To Dylan it looked as if the heads were writhing. Somehow still alive.

Dylan slowed to a stop a good fifty yards away from the creature, its great yellow eyes glaring at him with unmistakable hate. _Just turn around, _he thought to himself, hands tightening around the leather handgrips. _Just turn around and drive the fuck out of here…_

“TOO LATE FOR THAT.” The creature shouted at him, “YOU WERE OURS THE MOMENT YOU STOPPED.” The massive creature gurgled and took one struggling step forward.

In one fluid motion, Dylan drew his weapon and fired three wild shots at the creature. The first two hit the monster in the torso and the third, somehow, hit it square in the left eye. The thing roared in pain, arms flailing as it struggled to stay on its feet.

“OW! YOU MOTHER FUCKER---,” but now it was Dylan’s turn to interrupt. Three more shots slammed into the monster, gouts of thick, yellow-grey blood pouring out of the wounds. “GRRR, STOP IT!” the monster howled, now drooling uncontrollably.

_What are you even doing? _Asked the voice in Dylan’s head. It was a mixture of his own…and his ex-wife’s. Gracie. _You need to learn to mind your own business._ The Ruger clicked empty and Dylan moved quickly to reload, moving on a deeply ingrained instinct he’d learned from hours and hours at the firing range. _But it’s too late for that now, isn’t it? That thing was right. You’re so knee deep in the shit now you couldn’t force your way out even if you wanted to. And that’s the thing: you don’t want to. _The Ruger jumped in his hands, his arthritic hands twisted by decades of work as a mechanic. They ached now, the knuckles and joints of his fingers swelling visibly.

Perforated with dozens of bleeding holes, the creature had come to a full stop and was now leaned forward on its hands. It wheezed, struggling for each breath it forced itself to take. “FUCKER…YOU…fucker….” It gasped.

_You push yourself into a place you don’t belong and try to take control. _The voice continued as Dylan slowly lowered the gun, finally take a moment to wipe the sweat from his face. _Because you can’t have a little mystery in your life, it makes you crazy knowing there are things out there that others understand and you don’t._ Dylan slowly dismounted his motorcycle and, after checking to see if he still had bullets, began to slowly inch his way forward---towards the dying Thing.

With a loud thud the monster fell completely to the ground, its face upturned towards the approaching man. It tried to speak but only a wet wheezing would come out. Dylan saw that while most of its wounds were bleeding the yellowish puss, one shot in the side of its head was leaking….red. Crimson red. He stopped dead in his tracks ten feet away from the monster.

Mustering all of its strength, the monster lifted itself up on its bloated arms. It glared at Dylan with its one good eye with unmistakable malice. “You’re all like this. Right until the very end. Shit doesn’t matter until it’s happening to you, right? A bunch of self-absorbed ass…assholes.” The creature began to cough, globs of black ichor spewing out onto the grey, cracked road. That’s when Dylan noticed the monster’s skin was beginning to melt, sloughing off in liquidy chunks and dissolving into thick tendrils of foul smelling smoke. “If you…just would have…listened…she wouldn’t have started…this.” The creature’s strength finally gave out and it again crashed to the ground, face first.

Dylan stood there in shocked silence as the creature continued to melt. Before long, a small figure began to take shape within the dissolving flesh. His heart leapt into his throat. A boy, no older than thirteen, wearing a black jacket and blue jeans and filled with bullet holes, was revealed as the last of the flesh dissipated. He was completely still.

Holstering his weapon, Dylan knelt down and slowly reached out to touch the boy. Half of the boy’s face was covered in what looked like some sort of birthmark. A dark splotch against pale white skin. Pale blonde hair stuck to his face, matted with blood, some of it stuck inside of the eye socket Dylan’s bullet had pierced.

With a jerk, Dylan stood up, holding the hand he had touched the boy out like it was gangrenous. It was shaking. He realized he was shaking all over.

_Just a kid_

_Just a kid_

_It was really just this little kid_

Dylan fled back to his motorcycle and kicked it into gear. He tried to push the image of the dead boy out of his brain as he left it behind. Maybe it was human once, but…not in the end. No. The boy died a monster. That’s when Dylan realized the ring of heads was around the boy’s feet. It was real, but the heads weren’t moving. He almost stopped again to look back, but decided against it. He knew looking back would bring back his feelings of shame, he just didn’t understand why.


End file.
